The northern provinces of Armenia and Caucasian Albania were caliphal territory from the time of the Marwānid Reforms to the death of al-Mutawakkil in 247/861. Caliphal armies protected the frontier from Khazaria and Byzantium, caliphal governors minted Arabic-Islamic coins in Dabīl/Dwin and Bardhʿa/Partaw, and local Muslims built mosques and networks of knowledge in the North. Modern scholars have long employed the word ostikan, an Armenicized version of the Middle Persian ōstīgān, meaning “trustworthy,” to refer to the caliphal governor over the North. The incumbents of this position have occupied a premier place in the historiography of caliphal Armenia, as scholar after scholar attempts to account for every scrap of extant literary and numismatic evidence about the governors. Admittedly, it is an enticing project to try to unravel the inconsistencies in the data provided by texts and coins; presumably there is a “right answer” that scholars should be able to uncover with close study of the sources. The recurrent problem is that these lists do little to contextualize the information. Accordingly, the heart of this paper is not to untangle the discrepancies of dating the tenure of each governor. It will focus instead on broader questions concerning the identity of the governors, their familial connections, and their interregional ties. Drawing mainly on Arabic and Armenian sources, this paper will first provide a brief introduction to the position of ostikan, including the responsibilities of caliphal representatives and their relationship with the noble Albanian and Armenian families. Subsequently, the heart of this paper analyzes the choice of governor by focusing on issues of identity. Modern studies frequently describe the ostikan as the “Arab governor” of the North, but there were a number of Central Asian and Iranian incumbents who represented caliphal interests. Further, this paper identifies the bonds of kinship, i.e. tribes and family lines that recur in the study of the governors of the caliphal North. The goal is to understand how individuals exerted power in early Islamic governance of a frontier region and how the minutia of caliphal administration can inform the modern scholar about the connectivity of medieval Islam.